Iron Jackal (34 page)

Ashua Takes The Floor – Impossible Odds – Pinn Combusts – A Conversation in the Engine Room

F
ive nights left
.

Everyone was in a hurry at the moment, thought Harkins.

They’d hurried out of Thesk as fast as the
Ketty Jay
would take them. They’d hurried across Vardia, flying non-stop all day, with tireless Jez taking the controls when the Cap’n had to sleep. They hurried over Silver Bay, red and gold in the last light of dusk, into the Free Trade Zone, back to Shasiith by midnight. There they dropped the Cap’n off, with Malvery for a bodyguard, and then hurried back out of the city again, because they didn’t want to stay in dock for too long. They were afraid of being caught by the Sammie soldiers, still out for their blood after that whole messy business with the hijacked train.

They’d returned to the city a few hours later, to a different landing pad, for the rendezvous. No one had turned up, so they took off again, hanging in the dark of the night sky, floating weightless on aerium ballast until it was time to head to the second rendezvous at a different landing pad. By now it was past dawn, but this time the Cap’n was waiting, with Malvery and Ashua. He’d had some trouble tracking her down, despite the fact she’d left word for him, and he was fretting about the wasted hours. He called a crew meeting immediately, and everyone hurried to get it over with so they could get back in the sky.

Hurry, hurry, and it didn’t really feel like they were getting anywhere. The more they hurried, the faster time seemed to slip away.

If the Cap’n died, the Ketty Jay died. They all knew it. None of them were capable of taking command. Their little world would fall apart. They assembled in the mess with a grim sense of purpose.

Ashua stood at the head of the room with Frey. Harkins couldn’t say he was exactly glad to see that ginger-haired young woman back on board. Her stupid tattooed face annoyed him. He hadn’t forgotten her unkind words while he was fumbling with a lit stick of dynamite in the Rattletrap.

The rest of the crew were arranged around the table in varying positions of recline. Crake was yawning in his pyjamas and robe, looking hollow-eyed and exhausted. He’d been working in his sanctum all day and night, and had somehow roped Silo in to help him with the strange mechanical bits and bobs he’d picked up in Thesk. He’d just gone to bed when they woke him up again for the meeting.

Next to Crake, Malvery was sucking down coffee and looking dour. Silo smoked one of his vile roll-ups, which made Harkins’ eyes sting and his throat tickle. Pinn sat eagerly to attention, instead of his usual slouch.

He was up to something. Harkins could tell.

Pinn had been in a sulk last night, because they had to leave his Skylance in dock at Thesk. During the day, he’d disappeared into the quarters he shared with Harkins and banned anyone from entering. When he emerged, he was fairly bouncing with excitement. It was all very suspicious.

Harkins hated that hamster-cheeked dunce more than ever since his little stunt at the race. Bad enough that Harkins had no aircraft any more, nowhere to escape to. He felt like half a man without it, and he’d gone a bit hysterical until the Cap’n assured him he’d get a new one. But to have his moment of glory stolen from him . . . that was the worst thing yet! It was enough to make a man mad with rage, enough to make him . . . well . . . stamp his feet, or something.

Jez had seen it, though. Jez, leaning against the wall in her jumpsuit with her arms folded, hair tied back with a rubber strip. Jez, who stubbornly refused to swoon at his feet. His display of extraordinary bravery – doubly impressive since it came from an abject coward – had produced no discernible effect on her at all.

What was a man supposed to do to stir her heart, for rot’s sake? How much heroism would it take? Harkins was seriously beginning to think that he wouldn’t survive much more of it.

He glanced at the cupboards above the stove. Slag, not to be left out of a crew meeting, had installed himself up there, and was listening with one ear while noisily devouring a rat. A thin trail of blood had been smeared across the counter and up the cupboard door, which surely couldn’t be hygienic. But at least the cat didn’t bother him these days. He took some satisfaction in that.

‘Alright, listen up!’ said Frey. ‘Let’s make this quick, before the Sammies get wind we’re here. Try not to interrupt for a minute, if you can manage that, and we’ll get on our way. Miss Vode has a couple of things to tell us.’

All eyes moved to Ashua. She leaned forward over the table, hands on the back of a chair.

‘Here’s the situation,’ she said. ‘The man you want is being kept by the Sammies a long way south of here, outside the Free Trade Zone. Usually they’d have executed him without a second thought, but Ugrik is the fourth son of the High Chief of Yortland, and I suppose they’re not keen on starting an international incident. That said, they’re not keen on letting him go, either. I reckon they don’t want him telling anyone where he got that relic from, in case more go looking.’

‘So, what? We’re breaking him out?’ Crake snapped his fingers in the air. ‘Easy! Why not? Maybe we can smash a few more national treasures on the way.’

Ashua looked at Frey uncertainly. He rolled his eyes and waved at her to continue.

‘Er . . . well, anyway, there’s a problem,’ she said. ‘We know where he’s being kept, but we don’t know exactly where it is. It’s located somewhere in the
Chi-a’ti
sulphur basin – otherwise known as the Choke Bowl – an area covered with toxic geysers which is more or less permanently clouded by fumes.’

Silo moved in his seat and spat a word. Harkins didn’t know what it meant, but it came loaded with a frightening quantity of hate, and it sounded like he was naming the place.
Gagriisk
.

‘You know it?’ Frey asked him.

Silo glared at the table. ‘Allium mine. Murthian work camp. Place is a death-hole.’

‘It’s also well fortified,’ said Ashua, ‘with a standing defence force of a single small frigate and ten fighters.’

‘Oh, that’s just bloody fantastic!’ said Crake, who was evidently in a snarky mood this morning. ‘And I suppose we’re just going to waltz in there, guns blazing, yes?’

‘Waltzing in with guns blazing is pretty much the only way you’re gonna get your man out,’ said Ashua. ‘None of you lot would pass for Sammies or Daks, so chances of infiltrating it are pretty slim. You’d all be mordant before long.’

‘That means dead,’ said Frey proudly.

Crake looked at Ashua with a puzzled frown. Harkins saw her give him a quick wink, and he cracked a small, private smile. Harkins wasn’t sure what had passed between them – a shared joke about the Cap’n, perhaps? – but he wished people would just say what they meant and stop using words like ‘mordant’ altogether.

Jez spoke up then. ‘So, what you’re saying is, the only way to get Ugrik out is a frontal assault on a fortified camp?’

‘Yeah,’ said Frey. ‘That, and we don’t know how to find it.’

‘The Choke Bowl covers hundreds of square kloms,’ said Ashua. ‘And the mine’s location is secret.’

‘Cap’n,’ said Jez, with the tone of someone struggling to understand why she was even having this conversation. ‘There’s seven of us. Nine if you count Bess and the cat. Ten if she’s coming.’ She nodded at Ashua, then looked at Frey. ‘
Is
she coming, by the way?’

‘Yeah,’ said Frey and Ashua at the same time, though neither of them looked at all happy about it. ‘Temporarily,’ Frey added. ‘We can always use another gun.’

Harkins wondered if that was the real reason, or if Ashua had demanded to come in return for the information. It seemed like the kind of weaselly trick she might pull. Apparently, the reason the Cap’n hadn’t been able to find her last night was because she’d had a close shave with some Sammie soldiers, and gone into hiding. Shasiith must have been
really
dangerous for her now, if she thought she was safer on the
Ketty Jay
.

‘So,’ Jez continued, ‘let’s be generous and say Bess counts for three. That makes twelve of us, assuming we put the cat in some armour and strap an autocannon to its arse.’

‘Which isn’t actually a bad idea . . .’ Malvery mused, studying Slag. Slag looked up from his rat, sensing that he’d become the centre of attention, and hissed at them.

‘How many guards in this camp?’ Jez asked Ashua.

Ashua shrugged. ‘I’d say at least a hundred.’

Malvery coughed and spat half his mug of coffee into Crake’s ear. ‘A
hundred
?’ he cried.

Crake sighed and dabbed at his face with the sleeve of his robe. Harkins had some sympathy for him. It seemed like you couldn’t get through a day round here without someone spitting something over somebody.

‘That does sound rather a lot,’ the daemonist pointed out.

Malvery sat back in his chair, folded his arms over his belly and blew out his moustache with a huff. ‘Well, Cap’n, allow me to be the first to say that this frontal assault plan is bollocks.’

‘Seconded,’ said Crake instantly.

‘Thirded,’ said Frey, which threw everybody off. ‘Look, nobody’s frontally assaulting anything with those odds. But right now we’ve got no other leads to where the relic came from, and unless we get it back there pretty damn fast, I’m gonna die horribly.’

‘Least you won’t lose your hand, though,’ Malvery pointed out.

‘Yeah, there is that,’ Frey admitted, looking fondly at his hand in its fingerless glove. ‘Anyway, we’re gonna get moving, get out of Shasiith and head to the border of the Free Trade Zone. Soon as the sun goes down we’re heading south. And between now and the Choke Bowl, someone needs to come up with a plan better than the one we got.’

He surveyed the room. The atmosphere was gloomy.

‘I’m telling you all so you know just how shit out of luck we are on this one. Seriously, I don’t have a clue how we’re gonna do this. I want to offer you the chance, if you want, to step off now.’

Harkins felt a shiver of horror. He looked at the faces of the people in the mess, and was appalled to find that nobody was protesting.

‘You serious, Cap’n?’ Malvery’s tone was grave.

‘Yep,’ said Frey, with forced lightheartedness. ‘Take a week, do whatever you need to do. Catch up on family, see the sights. Pinn, you could go see that girl you hardly ever mention any more.’

‘Hey!’ said Pinn distractedly. He was fiddling with something under the table. ‘True love is never in a hurry.’

Crake snorted and muttered something sarcastic that Harkins didn’t quite catch.

‘Anyway,’ said Frey, ‘the point is, nobody has to do this. This is my problem. None of you have any stake in it, so this is your chance to get out if you want, and no hard feelings. Reckon it’s only gonna get worse from here on in.’

Harkins was agape. No! Nobody was allowed to
leave!
He’d already lost his wings. He was damned if he’d lose the only people in the world he wasn’t mortally afraid of.

‘We don’t . . . I mean . . . you think we don’t have any
stake
in this?’ he demanded, his voice more shrill than he would have liked. ‘I haven’t forgotten why I’m here today! You . . . Cap’n, you gave me the chance to
fly
again.’ He swept the room with what he hoped was a fierce glare. ‘And I’m betting everyone else here owes you just as much.’ He stuck out his unshaven chin. ‘
I’m
with you!’

Jez was gazing at him with an expression of naked surprise on her face. He felt a touch of bitter satisfaction.
See?
he thought.
You don’t know me like you think
.

Malvery was nodding. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Reckon you’re right. Don’t believe any of us’d be much right now if it weren’t for the Cap’n.’

Frey waved his hands. ‘No, no, you don’t get it!’ he protested. ‘I don’t want anyone coming out of a sense of obligation.’

‘Cap’n,’ said Crake. ‘Nobody
wants
to do this. Even you don’t
want
to do this.’

‘Still goin’ to, though,’ Silo rumbled.

‘Right,’ said Jez.

‘Right,’ said Harkins firmly.

‘
AiieeeaAAAAARRRGHHH!!!
’ said Pinn, whose arm was on fire.

The whole room watched, stunned, as Pinn scrambled away from the table, flailing. His coat was aflame up to the elbow, a bright burning wing flapping in the air. But before anyone could gather their wits and react, something even more disturbing happened.

Pinn started to laugh.

‘Suckers!’ he crowed.

‘Um,’ said Crake. ‘But your arm is on fire, though, right?’

Pinn was holding the blazing arm out straight, away from his body. ‘I don’t feel a thing!’ he declared, a big grin on his chubby face. ‘And you know why? Because my sleeve is coated in Professor Pinn’s Incredible Flame-Slime!’

A few seconds passed, during which the only sound was the restless grumbling of the flames.

‘Er . . . what?’ Malvery said at length.

‘Professor Pinn’s Incredible Flame-Slime!’ Pinn enthused. ‘See, I was mixing all this stuff together that I found down in the hold, trying out some new
experiments
.’ He paused to gauge how impressed everybody was with his scientific prowess. ‘And I came up with this! I only worked out what it could do when I accidentally set my finger on fire.’